LOS ANGELES—When the Colorado Rockies began seeking a new manager for their seemingly out-of-order, 98-loss club last offseason, general manager Dan O’Dowd and director of major league operations Bill Geivett called Walt Weiss to pick his brain.

The front office wanted opinions and straight talk about what should they should seek in a candidate. Weiss, a former Rockies shortstop and one of the more respected players in the game during his time on the diamond, consistently gave smart, thought-out answers.

As the ideas flowed and the brainstorming carried on, the Rockies’ brass had the kind of epiphany that would surely be met with spit and laughter: While asking for advice about a new manager, it was actually interviewing its new manager. Their answer the entire time had been their sounding board.

A man who was running a high school baseball program in the Denver area was their guy. A former player who had turned down coaching jobs in the organization to spend more time with his family and hadn’t been in a major league dugout since retiring as a player after the 2000 season, was their next skipper, the kind of manager starting to flood baseball.

Weiss had never managed at any level of professional baseball or been a coach. Outside of his son’s prep team, his only work in the game after retiring was as a special assistant and instructor for the Rockies for about seven years.

The Rockies, obviously, did not see that as a drawback. They saw Weiss as fresh, and, more important, ready for today’s game and players. Much in the way the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals thought when they hired managers with no managing experience – Robin Ventura and Mike Matheny, respectively – the Rockies wanted a guy who could relate to a new generation of players, someone who was more of a players’ manager than a strict, by-the-book baseball man.

“I know I probably got an opportunity because Mike Matheny and Robin Ventura got an opportunity and handled themselves really well,” Weiss said Monday, about an hour before his first-place team faced the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I think we make too much of (the lack of experience), maybe. I don’t want to be disrespectful to the guys that grinded and took that (more traditional) path, but for me, maybe because I’m naive, the game is the game. I try not to make it more than it is.”

To help Weiss live that philosophy, the Rockies surrounded their rookie manager with strong baseball people. In bench coach Tom Runnells (a former big-league manager), first base coach Rene Lachemann (Weiss’ manager for a year with the Marlins) and hitting coach Dante Bichette, Weiss has men who can help with strategy and in-game decisions. He understands that he doesn’t know everything and he isn’t afraid to ask for help or listen to ideas that are different from his own.

The “in-game stuff and the numbers and all that,” as Bichette puts it, are not why the Rockies hired Weiss. They also aren’t why the White Sox brought in Ventura, the Cardinals brought in Matheny, the Dodgers hired Don Mattingly or why the Miami Marlins brought in Mike Redmond. Going back a few more years, the Marlins did the same thing with Joe Girardi. None of these guys had professional managing experience before getting their first chances in the majors.

These teams were looking for a manager who could relate to his players in good times, but more important, in bad times. These men are not so far removed from knowing what it is like to have one hit in their last 12 at-bats. They know what it’s like to struggle and then dig themselves out of a slump. Not so long ago, they were part of the grind. Not only that, but there are still players on the field who played with and against them, which means that the game isn’t close to passing them by.

Because of that, each man has credibility and respect within his clubhouse.

“At the big league level, you’re faced with obstacles and unless you’ve been through it, you really don’t know how to handle the ups and downs from a player’s point,” Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said. “He might not hit the panic button as fast or might give a young guy more time to come around. Guys appreciate that.

Minutes before Tulowitzki praised Weiss, down a Dodger Stadium hallway and in the home clubhouse, Dodger utility man Jerry Hairston Jr. said almost the exact same thing about Mattingly, who served as a coach under Joe Torre before the Dodgers gave him his first shot at managing.

“Donnie knows players,” said Hairston, who is a third-generation major leaguer. “He knows what it’s like, and so do all those other guys, to play this game. And he played it in New York (as a Yankee) so he knows about the pressure. That’s why he gets so much respect in here.”

The Dodgers have World Series expectations, so having a manager who knows about such things is invaluable, especially for a team that’s off to a slow start. As for the Rockies, they entered this series with a 15-10 record and are one of the more surprising teams in baseball.

Will the success last? Well, probably not. The pitching is suspect, and until the Rockies get that figured out, they are just a nice story a month into the season.

But Weiss is already proving he can handle the job. Just as Ventura has on the south side of Chicago, just as Matheny has in a rabid baseball city and as Mattingly is trying to do here.

That success is helping to create a more detailed blueprint of the next kind of manager in baseball. The new-age skipper is less worried about righty-lefty splits and more concerned about how a guy’s mental approach to the game. He is approachable and calm, and will rarely scream at an umpire or call out a guy in the media. He wins and loses with the same expression on his face because he knows tomorrow can bring completely different results.

He commands respect because his players know the same things.

“Sometimes you can be too coachy,” Bichette said. “Walt knows what he knows and he knows what he doesn’t know. The days of beating a player down are dead. Walt understands that because he played and he remembers what it was like. The guys in here appreciate that about him.”

The new breed of players’ manager is finding relative success—these jobs wouldn’t be open if these teams were already great. The old group of recycled candidates for managerial openings is evaporating as organizations realize it isn’t such a risk to hire a respected, recently retired player.

We’ve already seen an overhaul in thinking with regard to front-office types and scouting departments. It was only a matter of time before that kind of progression made its way down to the benches.